


Inebriation

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Agoraphobia, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Insecurity, M/M, Self-Medication, Shyness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 16:49:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4843004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is framed in light of Sherlock's drug use--and of BBC canon use of cigarettes and liquor on the part of the characters. I think I've been fairly tight-canon-compliant in how I suggest Sherlock and Mycroft both use addictive substances, and to some degree with how Mycroft might process his knowledge of that. </p><p>Within that, though, I'm using the framing device to give us a bit of classic shy-Mycroft Mystrade. </p><p>Your comfort levels will kind of depend on how you feel about people self-medicating...and about the not entirely metaphorical link between love/attraction and chemical inebriants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inebriation

Mycroft had always wondered if his brother saw the obvious ways his drug use actually contradicted his various excuses for using. Far from using drugs when he lacked sufficient cases, to stave off boredom, he used cases to hold back the longing for the racing frenzy of drug use, in which the illusion of genius melded with a frantic rat-wheel hysteria of thought that only pretended to be either intelligence or interest. Instead of drugs as a second-rate replacement for true genius, he used true genius as a second-rate substitute for the delusional states of his addictions.

Cocaine—that one he knew would make his brother feel godlike, invincible, brilliant beyond all mortal ken. Given a mind as clever as Sherlock’s, the racing rush of thoughts would even turn out the occasional flash of inspired deduction, encouraging Sherlock, like so many over the centuries, to give credit to the drug that should have gone to his own resilient ability to think in spite of the drug.

Heroin was different. That false friend would soothe his brother’s eternal nervous insecurity in the face of his own driven vanity and egotism. The opiate served as Grima Wormtongue, silencing ambition, cloaking anxiety with apathy and depression, favoring sullen anger over hot fury.

Then there was the one-two punch, the dreaded speedball, the blend of both in one syringe, gambling his life and intellect to gain one more ecstatic high that wiped out anxiety, insecurity, frustration, depression… One grand rush in which Sherlock would feel temporarily like the universe existed inside his mind palace, all sorted and at his command.

His brother was brilliant, but had proven unable to see that the few, dangerous highs never did truly compensate for the danger, and the downs that followed. The illusion of omniscience didn’t compensate for the actual slow loss of intellect as neurons died and delicate networks of association degraded.

He had, however, eventually chosen life over death—mostly. Almost reliably. He’d taken cases instead of speedballs. He’d spiked his metabolism with nicotine patches and vile Turkish cigarettes so strong they curdled the air itself when he smoked them.

Even then it was best if John Watson was near, and aware, and the flat had been recently searched, and the case was particularly interesting. Sherlock’s ego and his addiction conspired to convince him that he could handle the chemistry, calculate his dosages, control his use. It took John Watson’s more objective medical evaluation coupled with close friendship to permit Sherlock to look, and look again, realizing that the drugs controlled him far more often than he controlled the drugs.

Mycroft, seeing his brother’s addictions, was far too aware of the chemical habits they shared. The liquor and the cigarettes. Sherlock hovered just short of abusing either—though John insisted that any use of smoked tobacco was too much, and that four nicotine patches was dicing with death. Sherlock’s use of liquor was more modest, somewhat under the norm for so many Englishmen. He drank socially, with John or Lestrade, but being a largely unsocial man, even those two friends were insufficient excuse to lure him into excess most of the time, provided neither friend chose to spike the drinks just to see Sherlock totter about picking fights over forensic expertise with small-time advertising agents and bewildered plumbers.

Mycroft was less comfortable with his own use. He fought to face honestly his tendency to turn to brandy when despair hit. Worse, he struggled to admit he self-medicated in direct contradiction of common sense. Why drink a depressive agent when already depressed?

But the hot burn of distilled liquor going down his throat seemed to mimic hope, and the quick buzz of inebriation softened and slowed his too-fast mind. In distress or despair Mycroft thought too fast and too frantically for even his own skills to manage—it was like trying to breathe in the face of hurricane winds. Just as the flood of air would force his lungs to freeze and his chest to seize up, the flood of thoughts and feelings kept his inner administrator from keeping order. The drink didn’t help much, and did almost as much damage as it helped—but it did help a little.

If he’d been a less competent man he’d have been a drunken sot—a helpless lush. Only his own excellence held the lure of the brandy bottle and the fine scotch at bay. There were few days that offered enough true despair to lure him to excess. Instead he ended most days feeling a certain sense of accomplishment that allowed him to order one or two scotches at the Diogenes. Just enough to gently, gently ease the hurried pace of labor, replacing it with the lazier rhythms of leisure.

“You’re still self-medicating,” his inner administrator whispered—but it did not whisper so very loudly, and he was able to answer in good faith, “Only as much as anyone does in drinking at all.”

He was in control, and would remain in control so long as he remained competent and convinced of his own integrity. He could even fail without overstepping and turning to the bottle. Only the occasional wild-card disaster moved him outside his appropriate limits.

He could accept that. Even studying Sherlock’s downfall, he could accept his own carefully calculated gamble with the incendiary burn of good liquor and the easeful sense of a day well-spent and ended in the gracious arms of a little dram of single-malt.

Nicotine was another matter entirely.

Nicotine he used for the wrong reasons entirely, and reliably made the wrong choices. His only salvation was that he used nicotine to deal with rare events and special circumstances.

He was a social smoker.

That was a very specific classification in his case. He used cigarettes (and sometimes cigars, and pipes, depending on his company) to cope with the push and jostle and uncertainty of social contact. He could, almost, manage a face-to-face “personal conversation” with John Watson in a public café if he had a cigarette’s worth of nicotine boosting his confidence. He could sit through a maddening cocktail party thrown for some dissolute “ambassador” if he was able to play idly with cigarette after cigarette. His hands were kept busy managing the slim paper tubes, his mind occupied by the ongoing need to attend to the ember and the ash, his mouth kept silent by the indrawn smoke and the exhalation.

When he’d begun in his covert, complicated career, cigarettes had still been a commonplace. Well—they still were. Much of the world still turned automatically to tobacco as part and parcel of social events, from cocktail parties to soirees, from hush-hush meetings in bomb-proof London basements dating back to WWI to posh, elegant affairs intended to lure in those of rank but no authority. But it was less common than it had been. Sometimes Mycroft found himself longing for a cigarette in some protracted negotiation in which two-thirds of the participants would lecture the other third if a cigarette had ever been brought out and lit.

He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He’d considered worry beads, but they gave too much away. Cigarettes? Society had once demanded you smoked them, and as a result the fiddle and fuss that went with them was meaningless. Noise, not data. You couldn’t use worry beads without people immediately knowing you were worried.

And it was people who worried him…Oh, God, they worried him.

He was bad at people. No—not bad at managing them. Bad at being with them. They unsettled him, they triggered his insecurities, they pressed too close, they were too unexpectedly intuitive. The intimacy of two men sharing a bus terminal, for God’s sake—even so small a contact was rife with exchanged thoughts and feelings, passing like telepathy in every move, every exchanged glance.

A room full of people, though? Or John Watson trying to sort out Mycroft’s words, always one revelation away from realizing how often Mycroft and Sherlock lied to him? Yes, it was for his sake as well as theirs, and the world’s sake as well as anyone’s. It was not their fault John was totally incapable as an espionage agent—the very person most likely in all the universe to be marked as security hazard if ever told the truth. It didn’t change the fact that there was John, a good enough man of his type, gazing into Mycroft’s eyes as Mycroft attempted to weave truth into so elegant an illusion that it told John lies—huge, whopping, sleight-of-hand lies and enchanted deceits.

Or there were the “family gatherings,” when he juggled all his secrets with his bitter, frustrated longing for his family to just once see his success, his loyalty, his tolerance, rather than focusing on, well…

Anything else. Everything else. Sherlock’s home! We have guests! Mikey, don’t just sit there, give me a hand with the potatoes! Dice the onions! What do you mean your laptop has to stay in your line of sight? Don’t be ridiculous—your ego does get the better of you sometimes, doesn’t it, dear? Quite out of proportion with common sense.

How could he explain to Mummy that his life had abandoned the standard limits of “common sense” decades before, and that her attempts to impose “proportion” kept missing the actual scope and scale of his real life? He couldn’t. Not without telling her things that were definitely out of bounds…but, then, Mummy and Father were scarcely better than John Watson when it came to keeping secrets.

So he smoked. A cigarette in the rain outside Speedy’s café. Another bummed from Sherlock out in the front garden, hands shaking as the nicotine hit, even as his lungs whined over the burn and sting of Sherlock’s damned Turkish brand.

And, though few ever saw, he smoked before he met with Gregory Lestrade, sucking greedily at his own rarely touched pack of low-tar, filtered, mentholated Lite cigarettes. Because any social contact was too intimate.

He could share a bus terminal with the man, and see too much—fear that Lestrade, in turn, saw too much.

He hunched under the glaring street light, Crombie pulled tight, with the London Times tucked under his arm, waiting for Lestrade to arrive for a rendezvous. If he had important news Mycroft would have to improvise a reason for them to depart together for further private consultation. If he had no news, they’d exchange a few words, then Lestrade would wait for his own bus to arrive—a bus he took often if his car wasn’t available. It took him from the Met to a Tube station that would carry him to within a block of his own flat. No one would think twice that he used it that evening.

Mycroft would remain, scowling, then feign sufficient impatience to dig in his pocket and call for a cab. The black car that would pull up would actually be one of MI6’s own selection of vehicles, and the driver one of their people—but no one was likely to think twice, not even foreign agents. Once in the back seat, the exchange would be complete, and Mycroft could retreat to the Diogenes—where he would drink his single malt and wash the nicotine stink from his fingers in the elegantly appointed loo, scrubbing his skin with castile soap and washing them clean with expensive cotton face flannels.

He would be able to exchange the drug of insecurity for the drug of satisfaction.

If all went well.

If nothing surprised him.

He drew out another cigarette, then jumped when Lestrade appeared like a magic genie at his elbow, offering a light.

“Here—Let me.”

Mycroft sucked the smoke down, knowing the shiver of his hands was as eloquent as a recorded confession to those with the eyes to understand what they saw. He dragged down another mouthful of smoke after that, to counter his subconscious response to too much intimacy.

Lestrade hovered at his elbow, too real, too solid. He could smell the man—sweet, clean sweat of a man who’d showered just that morning. Deodorant and aftershave. Coffee and tea—cheap and strong from whatever pot was close to hand or whatever food truck was in easy distance from a crime scene.

“The busses are running slow,” he said to Lestrade. His voice was even and calm. He had not lost his control yet. He would not…

“I think I’ve missed mine,” Lestrade said, looking convincingly peeved. It was the key phrase that let Mycroft know, though, that his purgatory of social contact would continue. There was news…

“Difficult,” he said. “Do you have a way home?”

“Shank’s mare. Good old fashioned shoe-leather.”

“That’s a shame. What way are you going? Perhaps we could share a cab.”

“South, over the river.”

Mycroft frowned. Lestrade had stepped outside the format of their exchange. But…

“We could split the cost,” he said anyway.

Lestrade looked him over, then met his eyes, his own probing—questioning. “Toff like you’s headed toward Mayfair,” he said. “Or Belgravia?”

Mycroft’s mouth fell open. This was miles off script—miles outside what he’d normally expect the MI5 agent and detective to improvise, no matter what. He shrugged. “Perhaps. Still—I can afford to be generous.”

Lestrade’s eyes flashed, and warmed. He let his bare fingers rest for a fleeting second on Mycroft’s wrist—on the bare skin just beyond the cuff of his sleek black gloves. “Kind of you,” he said.

“Nothing of the sort,” Mycroft, said. He crushed out the end of his cigarette, then without thinking fumbled nervously in his pockets until he found his cigarette pack. He shook another cigarette free.

Lestrade was there, lighter already out. One hand rested once more on Mycroft’s wrist, as though to steady his hand. The other flicked the cheap plastic lighter, raising a flame.

Mycroft, too aware, leaned in and sucked the cigarette into life.

He could feel the burn, the almost oily trace of smoke lining his mouth, clinging to his lips. He never smoked this much. Never. Not even a hard negotiation was enough to push him into chain smoking.

“I should call the cab,” he said.

“Let me,” Lestrade said, eyes meeting his with an intensity he found puzzling. “Got a friend with Yellow Cabs. I like to give him the work when I can.”

MI6’s cab was black, Mycroft thought. Yellow Cabs was a legitimate company, but—they’d be in a real cab. With a real driver.

“Where’s your place,” he asked, as a man might when working out a shared cab trip.

“Brixton address, but nearer Lambeth than Croyden.”

Mycroft nodded. He knew enough about the other man to know that he really did have a flat there, in easy commuting distance to New Scotland Yard. Was he really going to take them back to his?

The thought was alien to Mycroft. He could not think of one person whose home was open to him, other than kin and people such as Her Majesty, whose home was something of a public thoroughfare. It wasn’t as though the Queen invited him into her private suites, either…

He visited Mummy, and Sherlock, and a very few relatives, and even fewer contacts from his days in uni.

No, he thought, sucking down smoke, he probably ought to stop counting them. By his best estimate the last time he’d visited any of his school associates had been soon after the Bin Laden attack on the US. By the end of that year Mycroft had become so embedded in his work he’d rather lost track of mere college contacts…

So. He visited Mummy and Father, and Sherlock, and a few aunts, uncles, and cousins—and that was it.

He met his rare sexual contacts in hotels.

He risked an uneasy glance at Lestrade. Lestrade looked back, and flashed him a grin—a perfect, white-toothed grin, boyish and mischievous.

“I’ve got a new brand of lager waiting at home,” he said. “Thought it might go well with Indian take-out.”

Mycroft, at a loss for where this was going, said what came first to mind. “It ought to do. Similar enough to an IPA for that use.”

“Well, good, then,” Lestrade said, grin wider and brighter. “That settles it. Should I order more rice, or extra naan?”

Mycroft almost frowned and said, “Why are you asking me?” Then the penny dropped. He gasped, swallowing smoke so deep he fell into coughing.

Lestrade, chuckling, came and took away Mycroft’s cigarette with one hand, while pounding his back with the other. “Easy, easy. Out, out, let it slip out—now, a big breath of clean air. That’s right…”

He stomped out Mycroft’s burnt-down fag. “You shouldn’t smoke,” he said, gently. “You’re no good at it.”

Mycroft, blitzed, said, “They help me cope.”

Too much truth, he thought, desperate, hand going reflexively to his pocket for the pack. He never told that much truth to anyone, not even Sherlock. Of course, Sherlock could deduce most of it at this level, which did remove any need to tell him much… But, still…

“You don’t need ‘em,” Lestrade said, confiscating the pack even as Mycroft worked them free of his coat pocket. “Really. It’s not so hard as you might think.”

“When’s the cab going to get here?” Mycroft said, trying to deflect the other man’s attention. He looked frantically up and down the street, feeling exposed and helpless, hands lost without the benison of cigarettes to occupy them.

“Soon,” Lestrade said. “So—rice or naan?”

“Naan,” Mycroft said, knowing he was committing himself, and terrified at the realization.

“What dishes to go with?”

None? No, it was too late for that. Somehow Lestrade had tricked him, led him like an innocent lamb from the comfortable norms of their espionage rituals into the unknown terrain of social interaction. He was about to be taken to Lestrade’s flat, to eat Indian food and drink lager…

“I can’t do this,” he said, clutching the London Times. “I’m… I am expected at my club.”

Lestrade said nothing—just gazed at him in silence.

Mycroft licked his lips nervously. “Can I have my cigarettes back?”

“Why?’ Lestrade said, softly. “You’re not going to be needing them to cope with anything, after all.”

The words were gentle and kind…and sliced Mycroft to the heart.

“I’m not good at this,” he managed to whisper. “I don’t… I’m not…”

“It’s a bit of saag and a bit of naan and a bottle of lager,” Lestrade said. “I tell a few bad jokes. You sniff and explain that I have no sense of humor. I insist that you’re the one who’s missing the punch line. Look, you’re safe. I’ve already done the practice course. Sherlock’s an entire education in Holmeses outside their comfort zones.” He stepped close, as though his presence could protect Mycroft from social terrors the way Mycroft’s umbrella protected him from pounding rain.

“Why?”

Lestrade frowned. “Why what?”

“Why are you doing this?”

Lestrade’s face sobered—saddened. “Ah. It…seemed like a good idea.” His voice said he’d only just accepted that perhaps it wasn’t—and the acceptance grieved him.

Mycroft felt the usual guilt and uncertainty rise up. He was making a mess of it again—that social thing that happened when work wasn’t involved and there were no obvious goals and no clear demarcation of who wanted what from whom. He shrugged helplessly. “I’m bad at this,” he said again, then, longing, said, “Please—my cigarettes?”

Lestrade sighed, and fished in his pockets until he found the partly empty pack. He handed them back. “Sorry.”

“They help me cope,” Mycroft told him again, helpless to stop blathering. “It’s stupid, I know. But they help.”

“I know,” Lestrade said with a crooked smile. He watched as Mycroft shook out a single fag. “Took me years to quit. I still backslide if I’m not careful.”

Mycroft refused to meet his eyes. “I doubt you need them to get through ‘casual conversation,’” he said, bitterly. He fished for a lighter, and cupped his palms around it as he flicked it into life.

“Shows what you know,” Lestrade said, snorting. Then he reached up and cupped one hand behind Mycroft’s own, and blew out the lighter. His other hand rose and took away Mycroft’s cigarette, drawing it from his mouth and dropping it. “You don’t need it.” His hand rested on Mycroft’s shoulder, near the turn of his neck. His other hand cupped over Mycroft’s wrist.

Mycroft stood, frozen, hands still holding the lighter. He felt the warmth of Lestrade’s hand on his wrist. He felt the weight of his hand on his shoulder. His eyes locked on Lestrade’s warm gaze. “What?”

“You’re fine,” Lestrade said. “And when you’re not—that’s fine, too. Now, look—cab’s just pulled up. You joining me?”

He blinked, and straightened. He marshalled his nerve to say, “Of course not—don’t be stupid.” Instead what came out was, “Yes. Of course. I was being an idiot.”

He slid into the back seat, and Lestrade followed.

“Why?” Mycroft asked again.

Lestrade smiled. He gave his address to the cabbie and leaned back casually—comfortably. “Help you break a bad habit?”

Mycroft fought back an unexpected chuckle. “Somehow I don’t think so.”

Lestrade ducked his head in agreement. “Yeah, well.” He sighed and stretched, and turned to smile full into Mycroft’s face. “Someone had to be good at the social stuff,” he said, suddenly bashful. “After all these years it was pretty obvious it wasn’t going to be you.”

Mycroft considered it. He let it float in his mind. He allowed all the strange, charged feelings to rise up and whirl—but he himself felt almost calm, in the eye of the storm, able to consider this one idea.

Lestrade was doing this because Mycroft could not. And he’d been working through that for…years.

The certainty settled on him like the blessed burn of a brandy after a long, hard, but productive day. It eased his nerves like lighting a cigarette and having something to play with. It was better than one of Sherlock’s accursed speedballs. It was heady and heavenly and ecstatic and addictive, and part of him said he’d been safer with his drugs of choice and his self-medication.

And he didn’t give a damn.

It was wonderful.

He smiled, shyly. “Good deduction.”

Lestrade laughed. “You don’t mind?”

“I think you’re brilliant.”

Lestrade considered, then snugged up closer and leaned fondly against Mycroft’s arm. “And this?”

“Genius. Pure genius.”

“I think you’re delusional.”

“It’s the drugs talking,” Mycroft murmured.

“Drugs?”

Mycroft gave a little smile, thinking about Sherlock’s pet rant about love being a chemical disaster just waiting to happen. “I am inebriated,” he said. “Drunk on…” he paused, then said, softly, “Drunk on you.”

Lestrade was silent for awhile, and then said, “Consider it mutual.”

And then they turned and drank each other down, snogging until they reached Lestrade’s flat, to the complete disgust of the old-fashioned cabby.

But they were past caring. Some drugs just hit you that way.


End file.
